Now it’s personal: My nephew is fighting in Gaza

January 5, 1:06 PMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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The sweet lad in the middle of the photo was named for my late father, Zev, who was also a soldier for Israel—back in 1948, when the U.N. created the state and the surrounding Arab nations immediately invaded (and were repelled by a ragtag army of Holocaust survivors and native sons and daughters).  Now my nephew is fighting terrorism in Gaza, having been transferred from already difficult duty in the troubled biblical town of Hebron in the West Bank.

In the photo, taken a couple of years ago at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Zev is flanked by one of his two sisters and his brother and me.  My brother Sam snapped the picture during a happy frolic in the city of peace.  Sam and his family are currently ensconced in a Tel Aviv hotel while their village of Gan Yavneh, adjacent to Ashdod, is being barraged by Kassam missiles from Hamas killers in Gaza who are incongruously sworn to a ‘holy war’ against these families and, generally, the singular successful democracy and cultural and scientific center in the Middle East.

The fact is that I wish that my nephew didn’t have to be so brave.

For years, we have heard that Israeli soldiers are uncommonly brave because they literally fight in defense of their own back yards, school houses, shopping centers, and community houses.  A polled ¾ majority of the American people now understand this and at this very moment affirm that Israel’s operation in Gaza is “justified.”

Naturally, I agree, while my heart is hurting for the children on both sides of this horrific turn of events.  But I can’t offer a logical dissertation to grown men who swear the name of their God on their lips while admonishing their own kids to be suicide bombers and openly declaring that “the annihilation of the Jews…is a splendid blessing.”

The fact is that I wish that my nephew Zev didn’t have to be so brave.  I wish that he could return to his beloved video games, his profoundly peaceful study of Talmudic brainteasers, and to his active adoration of (and frustration with) the Cincinnati Bengals football club.  I want him to tap his feet to his MP3, flirt with girls, and be alive and well at his wedding under a canopy that veils no more missiles of massacre.

And I wish the same for every Zev born of a mother on the other side lucky enough to evade the teachers of hate in the name of a God who left the room a long time ago.